4 ms·

Those second two hydro stations came online at roughly the same time as nuclear plants quite close to them. Seems odd that so much hydro came online near nuclea

Those second two hydro stations came online at roughly the same time as nuclear plants quite close to them. Seems odd that so much hydro came online near nuclear power plants at roughly the same time if it's there to support fossil fuels. Renewables are on the order of 100GW net per year. This is projected to double or quadruple by 2030. Where does the millions of tonnes of Natural Uranium to start terawatts of reactors come from? If you want to bring down costs via serial production you need to start now and it will take you 20 years. The current capacity of lithium battery production operating or opening next year is around 1TWh/yr. If 50GW of reactors was brought online per year it would require doubling current Uranium mining and enriching facilities to provide the first load for each. The _current_ world battery production can provide 10-20hrs of storage each year for 50GW of new renewables (most analyses show you can replace most of your energy with about 4hr storage if you keep the gas turbines for emergencies). 100s of GWh of new production are coming online each year with new chemistries scaling up to ease strain on lithium extraction. Looks like Nuclear power can at best match current renewable and storage production. By all means build as many PWRs as you can as a small suppliment to the renewable production, but the nuclear industry just does not have anywhere near the scale needed and we can't afford to wait for the industry to figure out MSRs and then build them in serial.

Manuel_D 4y ago
> The current capacity of lithium battery production operating or opening next year is around 1TWh/yr. We'll see. The price of lithium went up by 300% in 2022, and it's still rising: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium It's true that batteries only contain a few grams of lithium, but cathode materials do make up half of a battery's cost. Once battery manufacturers exhaust existing inventories and have to place new orders we'll see how well these predictions pan out. > If 50GW of reactors was brought online per year it would require doubling current Uranium mining and enriching facilities to provide the first load for each. Where did you get these figures? The existing nuclear power production is 3,000 GW [1]. An increase by 50 GW would be less than 2% increase. On the note of uranium, the energy density of uranium is such that fuel extraction is less than 1% of nuclear's total cost (fuel enrichment, is a different story, but that's not a mineral extraction problem). 1. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... 27,000 TWh per year production = 27,000 / (365 * 24) = 3,080 GW of production. > The _current_ world battery production can provide 10-20hrs of storage each year for 50GW of new renewables (most analyses show you can replace most of your energy with about 4hr storage if you keep the gas turbines for emergencies). 100s of GWh of new production are coming online each year with new chemistries scaling up to ease strain on lithium extraction. I don't think you realize how pitifully small 50 GW is. the United States' electricity production is 500 GW on average. So the entire world's battery production would take 10 years to provision just the United States' demand. And the figure of 4 hours of storage is way more optimistic than realistic explanations. The output fluctuations from wind and solar vary both by the hour, and seasonally as weather changes. Estimates for a de-carbonized grid go as high as 3 weeks [1]. It's hard to criticize your plan of 4 hours of storage when you don't cite a source or explain how this will function. Usually a storage figure that low would assume some amount of load shifting. But then the cost of energy interruptions to industries needs to be a cost factored in - shutting down industries means increased costs borne by customers and load shifting needs to include this cost. > Looks like Nuclear power can at best match current renewable and storage production. By all means build as many PWRs as you can as a small suppliment to the renewable production, but the nuclear industry just does not have anywhere near the scale needed and we can't afford to wait for the industry to figure out MSRs and then build them in serial. Not only can nuclear match the scale that's required, it did match the scale required in France, Sweden, and other countries. The US has demonstrated its ability to build plants on the necessary scale, and we'd have a completely nuclear and hydroelectric grid today if nuclearization wasn't interrupted in the 1970s. By comparison wind and solar combined are still outproduced by nuclear power both in the US and in the world as a whole [2]. No country has produced the majority of its electricity through renewables other than hydroelectricity. The amount of storage to provide just 1 day's worth of electricity storage (4 hours is not a reasonable assumption for a de-carbonized grid without frequent blackouts) amounts to 60,0000 GWh as compared to just 400 GWh of current annual production. I have no doubt you are convinced in the idea that it's easier to increase battery production 50-100 times greater than humanity has ever achieved is more attainable than building 3 nuclear plants for each one that presently exists, but that requires an incredibly optimistic attitude towards battery production. And I mean "incredibly" in the literal sense: I do not find it credible. 1. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Methods_of_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Methods...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Where did you get these figures? The existing nuclear power production is 3,000 GW [1]. An increase by 50 GW would be less than 2% increase. On the note of uranium, > 1. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... 27,000 TWh per year production = 27,000 / (365 * 24) = 3,080 GW of production. First load. Not burn. You need ~100t of fuel or 750 to 1000 tonnes of natural Uranium per GW to start a reactor https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf there are only around 8 million tonnes of reserves. > the energy density of uranium is such that fuel extraction is less than 1% of nuclear's total cost (fuel enrichment, is a different story, but that's not a mineral extraction problem). Available infrastructure not cost. Also total reserves can bring maybe 2TW online in short order if production is increased tenfold, but then you only have 20 years of fuel with maybe another decade if you reprocess all of it. Asserting that it's 1% of the cost is asserting that it will always be at least as expensive as Hinkley. Current fuel costs are $4 to $10 per MWh depending on reactor, and the last time demand spiked even a little bit, that doubled. Asserting that fuel costs will remain at 1% if you try to increase production 10-fold is asserting that your new reactor will have an LCOE of at least $1000/MWh. > ... 27,000 TWh per year production = 27,000 / (365 * 24) = 3,080 GW of production. FYI You dropped an order of magnitude there. It's 308GW (about 400GW nameplate). Easy to do. > I don't think you realize how pitifully small 50 GW is. the United States' electricity production is 500 GW on average. So the entire world's battery production would take 10 years to provision just the United States' demand. And the figure of 4 hours of storage is way more optimistic than realistic explanations. Similar here (probably my fault for mentioning a 10-20hr storage). 400GWh/yr (previous year's output) would take 5 years for 4hr, production that has just opened would take 2.5yr or 20yr for the world's current electricity. > Not only can nuclear match the scale that's required, it did match the scale required in France, Sweden, and other countries. And there's plenty of battery production capacity for a single country, so this is irrelevant. The largest number of nuclear reactors that has ever come online in a single year is around 35GW (or about 25-30GW net). If 50GW is insignificant, then the nuclear industry is not even worth mentioning. > By comparison wind and solar combined are still outproduced by nuclear power both in the US and in the world as a whole [2]. Your wiki article is a few years out of date. Wind and solar outproduce nuclear now, and most of that capacity has been installed in under a decade vs around 30 years for the nuclear industry to achieve most of its capacity. So I ask again. How do you propose adding even 100GW of low carbon capacity per year just to match renewables now? Your proposed solution is currently at roughly 5% of the current scale of the renewable industry, and the existing critical mineral supply chains would need to be expanded at least 300% to match it.

Manuel_D 4y ago

> The current capacity of lithium battery production operating or opening next year is around 1TWh/yr. We'll see. The price of lithium went up by 300% in 2022, and it's still rising: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium It's true that batteries only contain a few grams of lithium, but cathode materials do make up half of a battery's cost. Once battery manufacturers exhaust existing inventories and have to place new orders we'll see how well these predictions pan out. > If 50GW of reactors was brought online per year it would require doubling current Uranium mining and enriching facilities to provide the first load for each. Where did you get these figures? The existing nuclear power production is 3,000 GW [1]. An increase by 50 GW would be less than 2% increase. On the note of uranium, the energy density of uranium is such that fuel extraction is less than 1% of nuclear's total cost (fuel enrichment, is a different story, but that's not a mineral extraction problem). 1. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... 27,000 TWh per year production = 27,000 / (365 * 24) = 3,080 GW of production. > The _current_ world battery production can provide 10-20hrs of storage each year for 50GW of new renewables (most analyses show you can replace most of your energy with about 4hr storage if you keep the gas turbines for emergencies). 100s of GWh of new production are coming online each year with new chemistries scaling up to ease strain on lithium extraction. I don't think you realize how pitifully small 50 GW is. the United States' electricity production is 500 GW on average. So the entire world's battery production would take 10 years to provision just the United States' demand. And the figure of 4 hours of storage is way more optimistic than realistic explanations. The output fluctuations from wind and solar vary both by the hour, and seasonally as weather changes. Estimates for a de-carbonized grid go as high as 3 weeks [1]. It's hard to criticize your plan of 4 hours of storage when you don't cite a source or explain how this will function. Usually a storage figure that low would assume some amount of load shifting. But then the cost of energy interruptions to industries needs to be a cost factored in - shutting down industries means increased costs borne by customers and load shifting needs to include this cost. > Looks like Nuclear power can at best match current renewable and storage production. By all means build as many PWRs as you can as a small suppliment to the renewable production, but the nuclear industry just does not have anywhere near the scale needed and we can't afford to wait for the industry to figure out MSRs and then build them in serial. Not only can nuclear match the scale that's required, it did match the scale required in France, Sweden, and other countries. The US has demonstrated its ability to build plants on the necessary scale, and we'd have a completely nuclear and hydroelectric grid today if nuclearization wasn't interrupted in the 1970s. By comparison wind and solar combined are still outproduced by nuclear power both in the US and in the world as a whole [2]. No country has produced the majority of its electricity through renewables other than hydroelectricity. The amount of storage to provide just 1 day's worth of electricity storage (4 hours is not a reasonable assumption for a de-carbonized grid without frequent blackouts) amounts to 60,0000 GWh as compared to just 400 GWh of current annual production. I have no doubt you are convinced in the idea that it's easier to increase battery production 50-100 times greater than humanity has ever achieved is more attainable than building 3 nuclear plants for each one that presently exists, but that requires an incredibly optimistic attitude towards battery production. And I mean "incredibly" in the literal sense: I do not find it credible. 1. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Methods_of_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Methods...

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Where did you get these figures? The existing nuclear power production is 3,000 GW [1]. An increase by 50 GW would be less than 2% increase. On the note of uranium, > 1. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... 27,000 TWh per year production = 27,000 / (365 * 24) = 3,080 GW of production. First load. Not burn. You need ~100t of fuel or 750 to 1000 tonnes of natural Uranium per GW to start a reactor https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf there are only around 8 million tonnes of reserves. > the energy density of uranium is such that fuel extraction is less than 1% of nuclear's total cost (fuel enrichment, is a different story, but that's not a mineral extraction problem). Available infrastructure not cost. Also total reserves can bring maybe 2TW online in short order if production is increased tenfold, but then you only have 20 years of fuel with maybe another decade if you reprocess all of it. Asserting that it's 1% of the cost is asserting that it will always be at least as expensive as Hinkley. Current fuel costs are $4 to $10 per MWh depending on reactor, and the last time demand spiked even a little bit, that doubled. Asserting that fuel costs will remain at 1% if you try to increase production 10-fold is asserting that your new reactor will have an LCOE of at least $1000/MWh. > ... 27,000 TWh per year production = 27,000 / (365 * 24) = 3,080 GW of production. FYI You dropped an order of magnitude there. It's 308GW (about 400GW nameplate). Easy to do. > I don't think you realize how pitifully small 50 GW is. the United States' electricity production is 500 GW on average. So the entire world's battery production would take 10 years to provision just the United States' demand. And the figure of 4 hours of storage is way more optimistic than realistic explanations. Similar here (probably my fault for mentioning a 10-20hr storage). 400GWh/yr (previous year's output) would take 5 years for 4hr, production that has just opened would take 2.5yr or 20yr for the world's current electricity. > Not only can nuclear match the scale that's required, it did match the scale required in France, Sweden, and other countries. And there's plenty of battery production capacity for a single country, so this is irrelevant. The largest number of nuclear reactors that has ever come online in a single year is around 35GW (or about 25-30GW net). If 50GW is insignificant, then the nuclear industry is not even worth mentioning. > By comparison wind and solar combined are still outproduced by nuclear power both in the US and in the world as a whole [2]. Your wiki article is a few years out of date. Wind and solar outproduce nuclear now, and most of that capacity has been installed in under a decade vs around 30 years for the nuclear industry to achieve most of its capacity. So I ask again. How do you propose adding even 100GW of low carbon capacity per year just to match renewables now? Your proposed solution is currently at roughly 5% of the current scale of the renewable industry, and the existing critical mineral supply chains would need to be expanded at least 300% to match it.